You write: "The trouble is that these notions are all circular. Who is a 'considerate, empathic human being'? Answer: Those with moral health."
I never said that nor wrote that. You are answering your own question and in the process committing The Straw Man Fallacy.

If someone, in any culture on the planet that you might visit, shows you consideration, then you may truthfully refer to him or her as "considerate," and I as an observer would agree with your judgment - about the event at time t.

You ask: "Are you saying that whatever a society thinks is moral, is moral? "
No, I am not saying that. ...What I am saying is that - like the Supreme Court said about pornography - if someone is kind and respectful to you, defers to you, gives you attention, and shows you consideration ...YOU KNOW IT. You recognize it when you experience it. You don't even need the confirmation by your peers that this is so.

The problem, representative of the moral chaos we find in the world today, is that you have to ask, as you did, "Who are my neighbors?"

The members who comprise the human species, the Family of Man, of humankind, are your neighbors!
{And for Professor Peter Singer, and many others, who have evolved to a higher stage of moral growth and development, mammalia are neighbors also.}

You write: " You need to assert why that particular meaning is right and the other meanings are wrong."
Why that particular meaning is right is to be found in the book, LIVING SUCCESSFULLY: how the new science of Ethics will benefit you. This link may prove helpful:https://www.amazon.com/LIVING-SUCCESSFU ... 0644914&sr

Robert S. Hartman wrote an entire book examining and analyzing attempts by philosophers to define "good," and showed how they were inadequate. Yet they pointed in a certain direction, namely toward The Axiom of Value [a synthetic a priori, that is, partly conceptual and partly empirical.] That Axiom is the eventual definition of "x is a good C" which he discovered.

It turns out that "good" is a secondary quality, not a primary one; it is a descriptor of descriptors; it is a value-quantifier - analogous to a logical-quantifier.

To illustrate: If I say to you "Meet me by my car in that (vast) parking lot." You say: "Describe it." I reply: "It's a good car." You won't know where to find it. If I say, though, "It's a late-model yellow car" then you may meet me there. What's the difference in the two descriptions? "Late-model yellow" are primary properties; while "good" is a secondary property - a property of properties. When I call the car "good" I mean it is what a car is supposed to be, i.e., it runs. When I step on the brake, it brakes; when I step on the accelerator pedal it accelerates.
To someone else a "good car" might mean that it has many more properties, but the car is "good" if it's 'all there' as a car, if it actually has all those features. So "good" is a quantifier of qualities.

You write: "The trouble is that these notions are all circular. Who is a 'considerate, empathic human being'? Answer: Those with moral health."
I never said that nor wrote that. You are answering your own question and in the process committing The Straw Man Fallacy.

You use many phrases without explaining what any of them mean. How am I to make a guess except by relating one phrase to the other? If I am talking to a straw man, it is because he is the only one there to talk to.

If someone, in any culture on the planet that you might visit, shows you consideration, then you may truthfully refer to him or her as "considerate," and I as an observer would agree with your judgment - about the event at time t.

Do you not see the circularity? 'Considerate' persons are 'considerate'. Yes; that is necessarily the case. However, it need not follow that everyone need agree which actions and people count as 'considerate'.

No, I am not saying that. ...What I am saying is that - like the Supreme Court said about pornography - if someone is kind and respectful to you, defers to you, gives you attention, and shows you consideration ...YOU KNOW IT. You recognize it when you experience it. You don't even need the confirmation by your peers that this is so.

In which case no moral question will arise. But ethics deals with those situations where we do not agree on such matters. Regarding your example of pornography, where one person thinks consideration is expressed by not subjecting them to images they find offensive, but another thinks consideration is expressed by allowing them freedom of expression. In such a situation saying YOU KNOW IT is not helpful, because evidently we do not all 'know' the same thing.

The problem, representative of the moral chaos we find in the world today, is that you have to ask, as you did, "Who are my neighbors?"

The members who comprise the human species, the Family of Man, of humankind, are your neighbors!

Do you then feel you have an equal duty towards every person? For example, you do not spend money on yourself or your own family while elsewhere in the world there is relative poverty?

Now that might be your position, but you cannot pretend that everybody KNOWS this to be the case. That everybody's idea of 'consideration' is to give away to charity everything beyond what they need to survive.

So, we have a difference of opinion. You need to produce an ethical argument, why you are right and they are wrong. Just saying how you feel and that others ought to feel the same way as you is not an argument.

To illustrate: If I say to you "Meet me by my car in that (vast) parking lot." You say: "Describe it." I reply: "It's a good car." You won't know where to find it. If I say, though, "It's a late-model yellow car" then you may meet me there. What's the difference in the two descriptions? "Late-model yellow" are primary properties; while "good" is a secondary property - a property of properties. When I call the car "good" I mean it is what a car is supposed to be, i.e., it runs. When I step on the brake, it brakes; when I step on the accelerator pedal it accelerates.
To someone else a "good car" might mean that it has many more properties, but the car is "good" if it's 'all there' as a car, if it actually has all those features. So "good" is a quantifier of qualities.

I do not see the point of the part of the metaphor about finding the car. If you are looking for something with your eyes then you will give a description that refers to visual qualities. That does not make the description 'yellow' necessarily 'primary'. If you were doing something else, like discussing which used car to buy, then it would be 'yellow' that would be (in your terms) secondary i.e. not much use as a description. In that situation, finding a 'good car' ('good' meaning what you describe) would be primary.

'Good' in that sense is understood relative to purpose. It is more or less precise depending on how precise our purpose is. For example, if our only purpose in buying the car was that it was yellow, then 'good' would mean 'yellow'. But if it was some overall balance of features, then 'good' would have a vaguer meaning.

But 'good' is not a 'quantifier of qualities'. That phrase makes no sense; we can only quantify things in as far as they are the same. I can measure and compare a single quality, e.g. the fuel efficiency of two cars. But I cannot quantify qualities (plural); I cannot quantify, and thus compare, fuel efficiency against colour. So, if in the car lot, when you say good you mean 'yellow', but when I say good I mean 'fuel efficient', that is not a problem that can be solved by quantification.

When 'good' is used in the moral sense, that is the problem. The qualities I might think of as important, like 'the right to life' and the qualities you might think are important like 'the right to choose' cannot be quantified, such that we can compare one against the other, do a sum, and determine the correct answer.

But if you think this science of ethics is applicable to any actual ethical problems, i.e issues on which people disagree, I think you should try applying it.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:
Morality is an opinion about how people ought to treat each other.

Hi there, Hobbes !

What is your view as to how people ought to treat each other?

That is a big question.
I can tell you it is mostly gained from my culture, party from my experience. Where I born elsewhere in place and time, that opinion would be different.
Historically morality predates any religion and the primal urges of co-operating animals, primarily mammals and birds have evolved to the requirements of co-operative behaviour. Such behaviours, it is clear, can either be followed to their natural conclusions, but can also be exploited by those seeking greater power, position or wealth (in the case of humans). Moral law as defined by the law of the land primarily is designed to establish and reinforce the positions of the hierarchical structures which control society.
My view of that is generally negative.

When you spoke of "the requirements of co-operative behaviour" it especially resonasted, and I liked that. So much meaning can be unpacked from that concept!

I hold that value-theory serves as the metalanguage for ethical theory.

Value is that which adds quality to life. Ethics is about creating value in your interactions with others.

This Forum is dedicated to Applied Ethics. ...Speaking of that, I just discovered this fascinating new website. It will help us apply Ethics. I signed up. All Philosophy Now Forum members, you may consider doing so too. Here is the relevant site:

. In our interactions with others we either add nothing to it, or we create value, or we destroy value !

In the Science of Ethics this is known as: The Principle of Value-Generation. Creating value when you encounter another individual entails going in the direction of Intrinsic value. [It means heading in the Intrinsic direction of the formula. This requires an explanation, as follows:]

Value science, is the metalanguage for Ethics. The founder of this science is the philosophical genius, Robert S. Hartman. He discovered (not invented) the Dimensions of Value. The three most-basic ones, S, E, and I,. When applied to mental affects, give us:

S: ConceptionE: PerceptionI: Experience.

Think of a sunset, as an illustration. you may conceive of a sunset in your imagination. It's a mere image. Or you can enumerate the properties, round, yellow-orange, bright, in the West, seeming to sink below the horizon, etc., as what the senses perceive.

But if you ever viewed a sunset on an island off the East Coast of the U.S.A., (as I once did in a kind of ceremonial event with a group of people together, as it slowly sunk out of sight, noted its warm glow, and its enormous size) the experience would be unforgettable.
If asked to describe it, one could go on-and-on about it.

The perceptual features comprise a countable list, but the experiential properties far outnumber them, and are even nondenumerable (uncountable). For the experience is so rich in properties. The more-appropriate number to assign to this is aleph-sub-one: perhaps the power of the continuum. {It is the number of points in a line segment.} In an experience the valuer forms a continuum with what is being valued.

S, E, and I are symbols abbreviating Systemic-value, Extrinsic-value, and Intrinsic-value. The S-values are the Intellectual values; the E-values are the bodily, worldly, every-day, pragmatic, socio-economic values; and the I-values ire inspiration, enthusiasm, integrity, empathy, morality, beauty, truth, liberty and honesty, sharing a connection, etc., etc.

Universals are S; Particulars are E; Singulars (uniquenesses) are I.

S: Essence; E: Existence: I: Reality. They are degrees of substance.

. They form a hierarchy with regard to how valuable they are, as values, with I-values being worth the most; E-values far less; and S-values the least ...among these three basic values. The formula for it is:I > E > S. When one I-values an individual, one has entered the field of Ethics. That is how "Ethics" is defined in the system.

Now you have a better understanding of S, E, and I than you might have had before. [For more details, see the first few pages of BASIC ETHICS, - http://www.myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/BASIC%20ETHICS.pdf -
It connects the dots. Read it for an enjoyable experience - {skipping over the technicalities in the first eight pages if you wish.}

Would you be so kind as to give us some examples, and to spell out more about your ethical theory, perhaps applying it to some issues. Show us how it works to resolve problems. Okay?

I would like to explore the possibility as to whether it may integrated into an even-larger theory....

I once got into an argument when I said "Killing is't always bad" and the other person immediately took killing to mean murder, and tried to make the case that it was always wrong. The discussion became quite intense and I finally just let it go without pointing out that every meal involved killing something to survive. Another point the other person tried to make was that of a paramedic answering a call and going into a house, and that the paramedic always followed the same procedure, as if to say that ethics were always predetermined and not set by the situation. As I said the argument was getting rather heated and I didn't point out that paramedics going into a house already has a situation that governed their actions. The ethics were determined by the situation, they wouldn't enter the house and follow the same procedures if there was no emergency.